His Best Friend's Baby (17 page)

He eased his hand down her shirt, pressing the thin cotton against her body. She was naked underneath, her nipple pebbled under the pink cloth. He leaned down and took it in his mouth through the T-shirt.

She hissed and arched, pushing her sex against his. She pressed kisses wherever they would land—his head, the side of his neck—and he wanted to smile at her clumsy fervor.

He understood it. Something about having her breast in his mouth made him feel like a teenager, untouched and blind with lust.

She pulled his shirt up his back and he lifted away from her enough to let her yank it over his head. He put his hand under the hem of her shirt, rested his palm against the tight trembling muscles of her stomach.

For a second, the magnitude of what was happening here, this leap off a high cliff, hammered home. This was
Julia
. Julia, Mitch’s widow. Julia who owned nothing but the shirt on her back. And there was Mitch’s son. He had no—

“Hey.” She reached up and forced him to
meet her eyes. “It’s just you and me, Jesse.” She smiled, part vixen, part angel. “And I really need you right now.” She arched again, pressing the damp heat between her legs against him. The simple movement pushed away all doubt, all regret. He let himself get burned by her fire.

He slowly pulled her shirt off her body. He kissed the tight knob of her belly button as he passed it. He greeted each thin rib. And finally her small breasts, the nipples drawn up hard with obvious want. He licked them in warm welcome, bit down lightly until she gasped. He smiled and kissed his way to her beautiful lips.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him so tightly he could barely breathe.

And he was fine with that.

Just once
, he thought.
I’ll have her just once
and then I’ll let her go
.

T
HE PLEASURE WAS THICK
, like syrup, filling her body until she felt full, ripe, swollen with need and want and a feminine power she’d never known existed in her.

She stroked his erection between her hands, ran her thumb over the smooth head until he shuddered and jerked away from her.

He’d already ruined her with his mouth and hands. He’d given her all she thought she could take and then coaxed her to the edge one more time. And now suddenly, here she was hungry once again.

“Make love to me, Jesse,” she whispered.

He fumbled at the table in his shaving kit and turned back to her with a condom in hand. He smiled at the incredulous face she made.

“Government issue,” he said before ripping the package open with his teeth. He slid the sheath on and was again over her. The solid warmth against her breast and between her legs was a drug she couldn’t get enough of.

And then he was inside of her, pushing against walls and muscles and nerves that rang like bells through her body and her heart.

She licked sweat from his shoulder and then bit where she licked, he growled and pushed harder, higher inside of her. She had a sudden appetite for more. She arched, lifted her knees. His hand found its way in between them, stroked the hard ridge of her clitoris and somehow not even that was enough.

She pushed against his shoulder, forcing him to his back and she climbed on top of him. She straddled him like some kind of amazon
warrior. A woman staking her ground. Claiming what was hers.

She ran her hands up his wounded chest and felt the hard beat of his heart under her hand.

This is where I belong. Where I was meant
to be
.

H
E WOKE UP SLOWLY
, Which was strange. Different. Usually he woke up on the razor’s edge ready for battle, but today he rode a sweet updraft toward consciousness.

The air smelled like Julia. Julia and sex and he wanted to linger in the warm sheets, in the memories of last night, in that sweet woman smell.

But someone was singing off-key in the kitchen and the smells of coffee and pancakes beckoned. Those homey scents brought reality crashing in on him, shoving aside all trace of dreams.

The world was up without him and there was no time like the present to see the damage he’d done. He didn’t know what to say to Julia, how to correct what he’d done last night.

He pulled on a pair of pants and a T-shirt and padded out into the kitchen where Julia had
her son tucked into a high-back chair. Ben wore a dish towel for a bib. She sang something to him about wheels on the bus and he shouted something back at her. She danced and twirled to the stove where she flipped a pancake onto a plate.

It was like walking into a scene from a fairy tale. The Dance of the Pancake Fairy or something.

“Good morning,” he said into the happy scene.

“Look, Ben,” Julia said with a twinkle in her pretty eyes. “It’s a bear!”

Ben, as if cued, did his bear impression and Julia came over and pressed a quick kiss to Jesse’s cheek. He put his hands on her delicate waist before she could run off.

“I don’t know what I am doing,” he whispered to her. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“It’s breakfast, Jesse,” she whispered back. “And it’s easy.”

“Nothing is different. I have to leave.”

“Not right now,” she said. She kissed his nose and moved away. She slid cut-up pancakes in front of Ben and a cup of coffee with plenty of sugar in front of him.

Jesse sat and leaned back in his chair in an
imitation of relaxation. But he wasn’t fooled. This wasn’t easy. Relaxing in his kitchen with this woman and Mitch’s son was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Yet at some point between his fifth pancake and second cup of coffee, it happened. Slowly, moment by morphine drip moment, he did relax and enjoy the morning. It was so normal, it scared him if he thought about it too long—which he didn’t.

After breakfast Ben asked Jesse to read him a story and he found himself with a lapful of toddler who smelled sweet and warm.

“He’s friendly,” Julia said with a proud smile.

“I noticed,” Jesse mumbled. He’d never done this, had never read a story about talking bears to a kid. But soon he was settled into the recliner with the solid weight of Ben’s head against his shoulder, over his heart.

He could feel Julia watching, tears no doubt in her eyes and a foolish hope about substitute father figures in her heart. It was something he shouldn’t foster. He should lift Ben off his lap and head out to the garage, out to safety.

“Hey.” Ben patted his cheek, an unsubtle reminder that Jesse had a job to do. “Story time.”

“Right.” Jesse swallowed and opened the book Ben handed him. “Story time.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, Jesse’s cell phone rang and Julia picked it up from the table and answered it on the second ring.

“Is Jesse Filmore there?” a man with a slight Hispanic accent asked.

“Sure, I’ll go get him.” She grabbed Ben and went out to the garage where Jesse had been busy for the last few hours. She knew he was hiding from her, hiding from what had happened between them three beautiful times during the night. She was ready to give him the space he needed to come to grips with it, but she wasn’t going to go away.

She wanted Jesse. And this time she was ready to fight for what she wanted. She could beat back his ghosts. She was sure of it.

“Call for you.” She handed Jesse the phone and looked at what he’d been working on. The cradle was partially assembled. She nearly gasped in reverence. It was so beautiful, so carefully and handsomely made.

“There’s no one there,” Jesse said, his brow furrowed.

“A guy asked for you.” Julia shrugged.

“Chris Barnhardt?”

“He didn’t say. Maybe the connection went dead.”

“Maybe.” Jesse picked up the wood glue. “What do you think?” he asked gesturing toward his handiwork.

“I think it’s beautiful. Rachel’s going to lose her mind.” Jesse nodded and squirted glue into a hole and then carefully placed a spindle.

“Are you going to come with me tonight to give it to them?” she asked, wondering if she might be stepping into territory best not stepped in.

“It won’t be ready.”

“You should come anyway.”

“I don’t know yet.” He took a deep breath. “I haven’t decided.”

“Well, Ben and I will be leaving at six.” She turned to leave him alone with his decision. “Oh, can we get a ride—”

“Of course,” he said.

She knew she was pushing him faster than he could take. But she knew she didn’t have a lot of time with this man to change his mind about her and about leaving. She leaned up on her toes and pressed a kiss to the soft pillow of his lips. She inhaled the warm spicy smell of him
that she knew she’d never forget. No matter how far he ran from her.

“Kiss!” Ben said and pressed a wet smacker to the underside of Jesse’s chin. Jesse gave Ben a big raspberry right on his chubby cheek and Julia’s heart swelled to three times its regular size.

Swelled past what was sensible.

The six o’clock departure time rolled around like high noon in the old westerns. She could feel Jesse’s agitation build until she thought the roof would pop off the house.

He’d finished the assembly of the cradle and loaded it into the back of the Jeep, packed it with old towels and blankets like precious cargo. She crawled back there with it after buckling Ben up in the front in an old car seat Nell had dropped off for her earlier.

“Off we go!” Ben cried, his hands over his head as though he were about to take that first big hill on a roller coaster.

“Off we go!” she echoed brightly, trying to beat back the tension that rolled off Jesse. The drive up the mountain to Rachel and Mac’s farm was painful. Jesse’s silence had razor-sharp edges. His jaw was held so tight she could practically hear his teeth breaking. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

She hoped for his sake that seeing his sister would bring this tension to a head, would relieve some of what tormented him.

They pulled to a stop in the gravel parking area in front of a low dark house.

Julia crawled out the back and walked around to unbuckle Ben. She took one look at Jesse and left her son buckled in, cheerfully trying to kick open the vents. She approached the driver’s side.

“Jesse,” she murmured. “Are you okay?”

T
HERE WAS A CRUSHING PAIN
in his chest, a burning in his head.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said, staring blindly through the windshield.

“You can leave,” Julia said. “You don’t have to stay.”

“She left me.” He licked his lips. “She protected me and she just walked away.”

“I know.” She touched his hand, slid her palm over his white knuckles.

“How am I supposed to forgive her? How am I supposed to give her that cradle and eat dinner at her table and pretend like nothing happened?” he asked on a huge breath.

“You don’t have to pretend,” Julia said. “No one is saying you have to.”

“I don’t think I can forgive her.”

“Really?” she asked and he turned his stinging eyes to her. “You can’t forgive your sister but you can understand the way your dad used to beat you? And you can put your entire life on hold for a dead man who wasn’t worth half of you? But you can’t forgive your sister for something she’s spent years trying to make up for?”

He wiped his forehead but didn’t say anything.

“Mama!” Ben screamed, and Julia squeezed Jesse’s hand.

“I am going in. You can leave if you want to, but think about this. Of all the people you’ve accepted in your life, she deserves it the most.”

And then she was gone. She grabbed her son and he was alone with his thoughts and the cradle and the gathering night.

He didn’t know how long he sat out there. But in the end, the thing that got him out of the seat, that forced him to put one foot in front of the other, was Julia.

If Julia could find it in herself to forgive her husband all of his crimes, Then Jesse could forgive his sister for those things she’d done when her back was to the wall.

Julia was ruining him. Changing him, his house, his family. He felt caught up in her current. Her giggle and cheer, her fiercely sunny disposition, her belief in the good things that he’d doubted for far too long.

He pulled the cradle from its nest of blankets in the back and walked over gravel and stone to the door of his sister’s house.

He put his hand to the door and knew that once he opened it, things with Rachel would be different. He couldn’t be the person he’d been for the past few years.

He was going to have to be that boy he’d forgotten and pushed away.

He pushed open the door and stepped into the bright light and laughter of his sister’s home.

T
HEY LOVED THE CRADLE
. So much so that Jesse felt a bit embarrassed by the tears, from both Rachel and Mac. He shot Mac a disgruntled look, but Mac only clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll understand when you have one of your own,” Mac said. Jesse’s gut trembled at just the thought. “Sympathy symptoms.”

“He’s even having sympathy cravings,”
Amanda chimed in. “All he wants are French fries! He’s worse than Mom.”

“That’s how much I love my wife.” He bussed Rachel on the forehead. “I’ll put those steaks on.”

Rachel led them out to the patio, where the setting sun blazed across the valley, turning the air into liquid gold.

“It’s so pretty.” Julia sighed.

“The view is part of the reason why I married Mac,” Rachel joked.

“She loves me for my land,” Mac said from the grill. “It’s a sad marriage.”

“Let’s have a story, Dad.” Amanda sat with her chin in her hand. “Something from when you were a kid.”

“You’ve heard all my stories,” Mac said, flipping steaks onto the grill.

“Mom?”

“Don’t look at me, all my stories are the same as your Dad’s.” Rachel set down chips and salsa and Amanda dug in. Julia reached over and grabbed a chip for Ben and no one said anything.

Jesse could feel Rachel’s eyes on him, like a motherly hand across his forehead. So he kept his own eyes focused on his plate.

I’m here. That’s enough
.

But he knew if ever there was a moment to bridge the chasm, this was it. Awkward and painful he stood on the edge of forgiving his sister, a breath away from erasing the past and setting things between them right.

He looked at Julia, trying to gather some strength from her, and found she was staring right at him, as if she could read his mind.

Go on
, she seemed to say.
Let it go
.

“I have a story,” he said. A pin dropping would have created a cacophony it was so quiet on the deck. Rachel’s hand stalled on the way to a chip. This was his olive branch and they all seemed to know it. “I was about eight, which would have made Mac and Rachel about fifteen.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Amanda cooed and rubbed her hands together.

“Mac found a wallet with five hundred dollars in it in the rock quarry.” Jesse studied his hands, the cut on his thumb, as the memory exploded through him

“I thought I found it,” Rachel looked perplexed. “Didn’t I find it?”

“Nope.” Mac shook his head.

“Mac told me he found it on a dead body. He
had me looking for a skeleton down there for about three years,” Jesse told Amanda.

“I found it,” Mac insisted, “but it was only a hundred dollars.”

“But Mac—” Jesse said.

“Are you sure?” Rachel interrupted and Jesse felt a smile tug at his lips. “I remember us spending a lot of money. We went to the movies every day for months.”

“Of course I’m sure.” Mac nodded.

“Whose story is this?” Amanda asked, rolling her eyes. “Let the man tell it.”

“It’s our story,” Jesse said. His eyes darted to Rachel’s and he managed to smile in the face of all of her emotion.
You’re my sister
, he thought.
You did the best you could and I
forgive you
.

“All of ours.”

“T
HANKS AGAIN
,” Mac said at the door, his hand a firm weight against Jesse’s back. “The cradle is beautiful.”

“Remember to let the glue set a few more days,” Jesse said. “And it will need some finish. I just didn’t get that far.”

He held open the door for Julia, who carried a sleeping Ben out to the Jeep, and he avoided
his sister’s eyes. He’d taken a huge stride tonight and didn’t think he could handle any more. He could barely breathe as it was.

He’d told the story. Forgiven his sister and survived the dinner. He’d only said about four words and eaten about three bites afterward. But he was here, on the other side of it, a survivor.

“Thank you, Jesse.” Rachel sighed, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Thank you for coming.”

Jesse looked up at the halogen overhead light and blinked back sudden painful tears.

“Oh,” Rachel said, as he was stepping out the door. “Have you heard from Caleb? Or gotten in touch with him?”

“Gomez?” he asked, blindsided by the name.

He hadn’t even tried to reach him in the past few weeks. Shame trickled through him. He’d started living again and forgotten about the dying.

“Coma,” he said. “Last I heard about three weeks ago.”

Rachel shook her head. “Not anymore. He’s called here.”

Jesse couldn’t contain his surprise. “What did he want?”

“He wanted information on you.” Rachel
smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t give it to him. I thought he might want to write an article.”

Jesse swallowed, clenching his fist on the doorknob. “I’ll call him.”

But that was a lie. He had no intention of revisiting that crash with Gomez.